The Skinny on Abs

Having abs shows that you’re even leaner than you need to be, that your posture is confident and athletic, that your muscles are strong, and even that your hormones are very masculine (study). Abs look so good because having all of these things at once shows that you’re not just healthy, but obnoxiously healthy.

Fortunately, we just so happen to be the body type that can rock a washboard stomach year round without suffering the negative side effects that other guys risk (perpetual hunger, reduced libido, etc). This gives us a real physique edge over the other body types.

However, as naturally skinny dudes with naturally smaller muscles, our walk across Abbey Road is a little atypical. There are usually two types of ab advice you’ll come across, and neither works very well for us:

Science says that abs are built in the kitchen. Usually yes, since most guys are overweight, and most overweight guys already have large ab muscles. In the Beastly community we see guys all the time who are more than lean enough to have great abs—but their posture is a little loose and their ab muscles are a little small.

No pain, no gain. The most popular ab routines are high rep circuits that make your abs burn with hellish fire. Abs are muscles though, and doing high rep crunches to build bigger abs is like running a marathon to build bigger legs. Endurance work improves blood flow but it’s awful at making muscles bigger. You’ll see some guys with crazy abs doing these high rep routines, but this is like thinking that taking topless Instagram selfies gives you abs because guys with abs do it. It’s not why they have great abs, it’s just something they do because they like their abs.

So what’s the best way for us naturally thin dudes to build Abercrombie abs?

Let’s start with an example. Here’s GK showing that abs aren’t built in the kitchen. He’s more than lean enough to have rad abs, he just doesn’t have the muscle size for them yet. Although I suppose you could say that these abs were built by eating everything in the kitchen, it’s probably more accurate to say that they were built in the gym (or home gym or wherever you want to lift).

So in this article we’re going to show you how to build a rock hard, chiseled 6-pack from the perspective of a skinny guy. These bigger abs will not only look badass, they’ll also make you far stronger, protect your spine and improve your posture.

Ab Anatomy

Before we can woo ourselves some washboard abs we must first understand them.

To begin, let’s cover the muscles that are underneath your visible abs—the transverse abdominis muscles. These work sort of like a lifting belt or a corset, keeping your core on lockdown. You don’t see these though, and so long as your lifting program is well balanced and you lift with good form you won’t need to give these guys special attention. They’ll grow plenty strong by doing squat and deadlift variations.

When we say “abs” what we’re generally talking about are our rectus abdominis muscles. These muscles are made up of a series of bellies and tendons. The bits that bulge out are the bellies, the canyons between the bulges are the tendons. This gives them their unique washboard shape.

These ab muscle bellies can flex, just like any muscle belly can, allowing us to move our core like an accordion. Our abs allow us to crunch forwards, our obliques allow us to twist around and crunch sideways. More importantly, these muscles help us resist movement, keeping our ribs and hips on lockdown when doing compound movements. This let’s us squat down and pick something up without looking like a jelly fish, keeping our spine safe and allowing us to transfer power from our lower body to our upper body. The transverse abdominis helps with this as well.

You could say that our abs are our most important muscles, as you can’t even do a bicep curl if your core has the consistency of an overcooked noodle.

This means that if you follow a good program made up of mostly compound lifts, your abs will become big and strong without you ever needing to directly train them… right? That works well sometimes, but more so for naturally stocky dudes. As someone with a longer slenderer torso you’ll probably want to directly target your abs to make your compound lifts even stronger, even safer, and, of course, to make your abs look way better.

As you build up bigger abs, you’ll soon notice that they have their own distinct shape. You can make your muscle bellies bigger with good training, but you can’t do anything to affect their symmetry or to alter the number of tendons that you have. So some guys have an 8-pack, other guys have a 6-pack. Some guys have a wide-pack, others guys have a thin-pack.

In a controversial new study, science has just recently proven what belly-dancers have known for thousands of years—with enough coordination these muscle bellies can be individually targeted (study). After learning this, most guys will think that they have smaller lower abs.

While it’s possible that your lower ab muscles are disproportionately small, keep in mind that men store more body fat on their lower stomach than their upper stomach. Lower abs tend to be murky unless you are very lean—under 10%.

Also keep in mind that if your ribs aren’t in their proper position, they might be shoving your upper abs out further than they should be, making your lower abs look smaller by comparison.

And there’s another thing that might prevent you from getting defined lower abs: you may not have lower abs. If you take a look at Arnold Schwarzenegger, for example, you can see that he has just four ab bellies, and all of them are above his belly button. Even if Arnold were to train hislower abs he’d still never have any definition on his lower stomach. There are no muscle bellies there.

We’ve included the best lower ab exercise at the end of this article, but don’t worry too much about targeting different ab muscles just yet. We’ll want to make sure that we train both your obliques and your abs, but we don’t need to worry about training upper abs or lower abs or anything like that. For now we want to fully work the entire accordion.

The cool thing about abs though is that they all look amazing so long as they are big enough and lean enough. Every set of abs will be different—and all will be badass.

How lean do you need to be to have abs?

Not all skinny guys have a low body fat percentage. Many do, but it’s fairly common for skinny guys to be between 15–20% body fat, which is characterized by a softer stomach. Building up bigger ab muscles when there’s a substantial amount of fat on top of them will just push the fat out further. Not the desired effect.

For a flat stomach, you’ll want to be at around 15% body fat. That’s enough to make you attractive to most women, but it’s not enough to have clear abs.

But if you want to see how lean you need to be to have abs, here’s me at roughly 11%. You can see that my abs are just barely coming in. Another couple body fat percentage points higher and they’d be covered.

But let’s say you’re closer to 20%. That’s not the end of the world. Your body fat is still fairly healthy, and if you decide you want to be lean enough for abs, you’re not that far away. Here’s what you can realistically expect after three months of scientifically cutting—all muscle maintained, 20 pounds of fat lost:

While doing this you’ll want to be following a good lifting program. If you’re already somewhat muscular (as I was) you can expect to maintain your muscle mass and strength. But if you’re new to lifting and eating scientifically, you should be able to build some muscle while losing fat—the holy grail!

This means that whether you’re lean enough or not, you need to be lifting.

So whether you’re under 15% or not, let’s move on to building badass abs in the gym.

How to Build Badass Abs

We’re going to teach you the best exercises for building up badass abs, but keep in mind that we need to get your hips positioned properly in order to get your ab muscles firing properly. With proper posture, literally everything you do in and out of the gym will be training your abs. Your abs won’t be hanging loose as you stroll around town, your gut won’t be jutting out even though you’re at 9% body fat, and eating a big meal won’t make you look quite as pregnant.

If you want to see what this looks like in real life, check this out:

This should also help fix the “lazy stomach” that some guys get when they aren’t intentionally flexing their ab muscles. Some degree of this is okay, but it’s best if your abs have the strength, positioning and endurance to always have a little bit of tension in them.

Here are two pictures that b2B member Jeremy took just seconds apart. On the left side, even with a very low body fat percentage, his ab positioning is preventing him from having abs. When your stomach is stretched like that it prevents the abdominal muscles from contracting properly, preventing them from naturally holding a little tension.

Fortunately, stronger ab muscles are better at holding your hips and ribs together. This means that building up bigger abs will improve your posture, and improving your posture will help you build up bigger abs. These goals work additively with one another. By focusing on both simultaneously you’ll get the quickest (and best) results.

There are a few exercises that are particularly effective at getting your hips into a proper position and building up bigger, stronger abs. Here are six different lifts that will bulk up your abs in different ways, improve your posture, and build bonus muscles everywhere else on your body.

Here’s Marco with the how-to.

The plank. This will show you what proper pelvic positioning looks like and teach your core how to become comfortable maintaining that position under a light load.

The farmer carry. In this exercise we’re teaching you how to maintain that plank position while walking around with heavy things. Great for the obliques, great for developing a core that will look good even when you aren’t thinking about it.

Sit-Ups. Crunches involve repeatedly bending your spine under load. While there is little direct evidence that they are bad for you, the most respected spinal health expert in the world, Dr. Stuart McGill, advises against them. Instead, he recommends variations where the spine remains in a more neutral position. These spine-conscious variations will also ingrain better lifting habits, as you’ll learn how to keep your abs on lockdown during compound lifts. Here’s an ab isolation exercise that’s safe, healthy and effective:

Dumbbell Pullovers. In this exercise you’re moving in the shoulder joint while your abs fight to keep your ribs down. The bigger and stronger your back and chest get, the bigger and stronger your abs will become.

Goblet Squat. In this exercise you’re moving in the hips while your entire core is lit up. The bigger and stronger your entire body becomes, the bigger and stronger your core will become.

Reverse Crunches. This is the ultimate lower ab exercise, and it’s actually pretty great at teaching your abs to pull your hips up into a nice, strong position. Great all-around ab exercise.

Once you become good at these exercises pretty much everything you do will help you build incredible abs. At this point your abs will probably be looking good enough that you get bored of training your abs and switch your priorities to something else—getting a stronger bench press or deadlift, or maybe building yourself some beastlier biceps and pecs.

…But if you still feel like your abs are too tiny, this is a great time to introduce more difficult variations. There are many, many great compound and isolation lifts for your abs: dead bugs, front squats, weighted chin-ups, weighted push-ups, ab-wheel rollouts, hanging leg raises, Pallof presses, and many more.

Conclusion

When it comes to your abs, always remember the three things you need:

Big enough abs, so that your belly is shaped by many little bellies

A lean enough stomach, so that you can see your abs through the flabs

Proper posture, so that your abs will activate and flex naturally

Also remember that you don’t need abs. You’re perfectly healthy at 18% body fat and perfectly attractive to women at 15% body fat. Abs are a bonus. No need to stress out if you lose sight of your lower abs when bulking, or if you’re a skinny-fat guy and want to focus on building up muscle before you worry about your stomach. Hell, once you’re muscular enough you may realize that you don’t even care about abs at all.

And as always, if you want more help building muscle, more help cutting fat, and more help getting rad abs… that’s what the Bony to Beastly Program is for. The main eBook covers absolutely everything you need to know about muscle-building training and nutrition, it comes with over 5 months of workout programming, tons of recipes to make eating enough easier, videos teaching all of the lifts (like the ones in this article), a yearlong membership in the community, and coaching from us along the way.

Mm, yeah, I can flip that image back around. I always forget to anticipate that things can seem misleading when you don’t actually know us yet / aren’t seeing the changes happen week by week, month by month.

I am in the range: 12% strong guy. I trained my abs in the past a bit more. Not so much lately. The most difficult and time demanding (patience) will be the work on fixing my posture and getting pelvis in a proper position.I believe that in 3 months ar so first results can show.

Btw, Marco in all his video, funny and the t-shirts are great, I always chuckle even when I have a bad day 😉

Dudes. This post is a God-send! Traditional ab exercises (crunches and the like) tend to kill my lower back. As a result, I resigned to just not having abs. These feel great, though, after a few tries. Hopefully I can see some results soon as I work on my diet. Question – can I do these exercises too often? Better question – does doing them everyday actually help more than say every other day? Thanks guys.

Yeah, you can definitely do them too often. Best to hit them solidly every couple of days rather than a little bit every day, just as with any other muscle group. In the b2B program we do three full body workouts per week, each ending with some quick ab isolation lifts.

Hey and thanks for a great article once again! Just have a question regarding the plank. How many minutes are ideal/normal to this exercise per set? Or in other words, should you do the plank until failure? And how many sets are ideal?

Glad you liked it, Gorm! For the plank we like thinking in terms of breaths. This let’s us focus more on breathing naturally, and we find this carries over into better performance elsewhere. So 5–7 breaths, rather than 20–30 seconds. That gets you right in that ideal muscle-building range. (More than that would become more of an endurance thing, so not really our goal with this.) When that becomes easy, move to a more difficult variation.

I wouldn’t go to failure, especially if you have weights on your back or anything like that. The renowned back researcher wound up hurting his back that way—doing planks with tons of weight on his back, he reached failure, his back caved in, and he ran into some issues. Not that this would happen when doing an unweighted plank, but it’s still best to avoid it.

How many sets? That depends on what lifts come before it, how many times you’re doing it per week. For a general recommendation though, 2–4 sets per workout done 2–3 times per week should be pretty great 🙂

I hope your knee feels better soon, Rafael! No lift is perfectly safe, but this is one of the ones that’s more safe than many others. (And lifting in general is safer than even most casual sports, like soccer.) Sometimes if you’ve got knees that are especially susceptible to injury (or it had previously been injured) then squatting can cause pain. Oftentimes this can be fixed by focusing more on moving your butt down/back, and less on bending your knees. If you get your weight resting further back—in your hips—it will put less stress on your knees. You may need some knee wraps or something though.

I hope that helps, and feel better soon, man! I know this stuff can be frustrating, but it will all come together if you stick with it.

Dudes, I can’t believe how good this website is. Finally there is one website helps us to get to shape. Extremely helpful, motivates more than any others. So, as a skinny guy with the beer belly, should I do those exercises every day like a squat challenge apart from my gym schedule? Also, I can’t complete situps for some reason, I can’t stop using my neck going forward. Is this a sign of I am super weak or is it normal at first? Can you recommend something else other than situps or crunches? Thank you.

Thanks, Adam! Glad you dig it. As a skinny guy with an actual beer belly (high body fat percentage) keep in mind that all ab exercises will do is make your ab muscles bigger, i.e., make your core bigger. So if anything it will grow your beer belly. To get rid of it you’d want to cut, and that’s more about lifting overall, eating in a calorie deficit, eating enough protein. However, you can certainly do these ab exercises while cutting to make sure that you come out of your cut with nice abs. (If you’ve got the skinny-guy beer belly that’s caused just by poor posture or a food baby then feel free to gain a little weight while building up your ab muscles.)

As far as scheduling goes, treat your abs like any other muscle, training them every second day, and work them hard enough that you need that second day. (Squatting every day can work under the right circumstances but that’s a whole other story.)

For your sit-ups, try weighting down your feet. If that still doesn’t work, just skip them for a month and then reevaluate. You can do extra sets of the other ab exercises in the meantime.

This is a great website! If I’m 17 years old and playing basketball at least 2 times a week can I still get good results because I’m constantly running up and down the floor like I’m doing endurance training. Thanks

Also by the way is there any other way I can get this program without having to pay 197? I would ask my parents but they would say “we’re not buying that” or “you have to pay for that” and I don’t have any money or a job. I’m 6’6 190 trying to close in my basketball scholarship. Thanks

2) My stomach is flat but soft/jiggly. Does this mean I have a flat stomach despite having fat, or does the softness/jiggliness hint at loose or weak stomach muscles? If it is the former, i should lose fat, but if the latter then i should work my abs, right? But how do I know which it is – the stomach is flat, so I assume i have little fat. But since it jiggles I assume the opposite also (meaning I have more fat to lose). It is so confusing.

Sucking in your abs is indeed flexing some core muscles, but when we talk about flexing abs we’re talking about flexing your rectus abdominis muscles—the abs that make up your 6-pack. It can take a little patience and practice to learn how to flex specific muscles, and your abs are no different. One way to start learning what it feels like to flex your abs is to forcefully breathe out. Try breathing out through a nearly closed fist, for example.

If it’s soft and jiggly that sounds to me like there’s some fat there. If your stomach is flat though then there isn’t much fat there. May be a case where you need to lose just a little fat and then build some muscle.

A lot is different! The workout program has been tweaked and improved, all the videos have been updated, new illustrations, new stories, new information, new programming in the community, new bonus member content, new challenges, etc.

The fundamentals of lifting and nutrition are still the same, of course, but we’ve organized them in far clearer way that makes it easier to understand which aspects are the most important. Because we have a clearer hierarchy now, that also means we can go more in-depth at the end of the eBook without it being overwhelming for the newer guys. I think you’d really like it 🙂

A membership includes a year of updates, so you should have had access to the most recent version of the program right up until the end of your membership (and then you get to keep it forever). If you want this new update, you can sign back up as a returning member for 9/month at http://www.bonytobeastly.com/members. So if you wanted the new stuff you could get it for that $9 then cancel your subscription, although hopefully you’d decide to stick around! The community is pretty amazing these days 🙂

Great article guys!! Hey i’m new here and i’m really keen to this program. But i have the same issue as Tyler ^ , so can i know more about the student discount & payment plan (4 payment) as well? really hope to hear from you guys soon!!

Hello! I just stumbled upon your website. As another broke college student, could I also get the payment plan info? Currently I’m 6’4” and about 173-178 depending on the week, flat stomach but would really like to build some definition. Thank you!

Hello there 🙂 I just happened upon this site and read through it a tad. I’m 5’5” and currently around 64.5 kilograms as of my latest weight measurement, and am trying to put on more weight after losing around 2-3 kilos over the last few months. Unfortunately I noticed serious drops in muscle size too and well, to be fair I’ve had a bizarre sort of journey…(#longstorycomingup) ahem…

I started working out last year and first went on a schedule to bulk myself up, right up to 68 kilograms after starting at around 60 (somewhat skinny-fat) and well I gained size and strength and also a great deal of stomach fat. Afterwards I fell ill due to a flu at the end of the year and had dropped 3 kilos, dropping my stomach too. I went on a slightly more intense schedule after, and have been doing that for, unfortunately, six months. I lost again recently, getting to around 62-63 kilos, so I saw the abs but also lost a good deal of size. Recently I got back to bulking up once more, and noticed today that a lot of ab definition has been lost, especially on the lower stomach.

My chest, shoulders, back, legs and arms all look better, and I’ve regained a good deal of size and power and really I want to see some ab definition without losing all that size and weight again. Heck, I would like to go back to 68, maybe with less belly fat involved. It’s mostly strength and size I’m looking for.

We’ve been trying to stay on top of emails even during the holiday season but I was a little worried that one slipped through. But it didn’t! Jared answered your email on the 24th, just a couple hours after you sent it. I’d check your junk mail just to make sure it’s not hiding in there.

To answer your question about the dumbbells, yes, Bowflex is great… as are the ones we recommend in our article. Just depends on your budget and preferences. Whichever dumbbells you choose, they’ll be enough to get the results we promise 🙂

Hey Guys! Is it possible to have a small waist, where i can see my upper 2-4 abs, but not the lower abs and have some sort of love handles? (Im 170 cm tall and have a 74 cm waist, which is quite small i guess) Maybe it is wide hips or what? What can i do to make this part smaller?

Also, do you guys have any sort of payment plan or discount for students? I really would like to join you guys, but im sure as hell i couldnt pay 200 bucks instantly. :/

Different people have different bone structures and fat storage patterns, so it’s very possible to have a small waist and wider hips, or a small waist and love handles. The best way to get a great looking core tends to be the same for most people, though: build up some hearty abs and obliques, and minimize your overall body fat percentage. The bigger core muscles should minimize any appearance of an hourglass shape, and getting rid of extra fat should take care of the love handles.

Fantastic post. Abs have always been an issue for me, likely due to poor diet choices, believing the conventional view of smashing out 1,000 crunches a day and questionable posture. It’s always made me very self conscious in terms of taking my shirt off at the beach/when with a lady friend.

Breaking down the ab section and how it should/could look based on our genetic make up was very insightful. Thank you for putting this post up, the passion that the 3 of you have for helping skinny guys out is clear for everyone to see.

Hey how to I get lean muscle, I am 113-114, 5,8 and having trouble with getting a six pack. I’m also female so it’s harder for me. Please show me your daily ab routine and what you eat to bulk up. I really need to get stronger for my strength and conditioning class. Thank you

So I have two ab muscles at the base of my rib cage, right under my pecs. They are really weird; they stick out more than any other of the ab muscles (although I have a tiny bit of muscle definition a little lower) Can you please tell me why this is and how to fix it if I can. I don’t know, it could be genetics because I’ve been doing mostly reverse crunches and all that and the problem is still there. I looked at your chart and I found out that I have about 11% body fat. Thanks for the help!

Heya Connor. First of all, why is this necessarily a problem? It’s totally normal to have those as a lean guy with some muscle on him.

Second, if it is indeed an issue, are you sure it’s not a postural issue? If you’ve got something called “rib flare” then that part of your body would be angled upwards. You could go to the mirror, make sure your ribs are down in their proper position, and see if those abs still stick out in a weird way.

Third, is it possible that building up bigger pecs would bring things back into balance?

Abs have always been one of my most developed body parts. Before I started training they looked decent. In my first couple years (8 years training atm) I went crazy on the ab volume because I didn’t know any better. Mostly consisting of sit ups and leg raises. Anyways back to now, even when I’m lean my abdominal region feels too ‘big’ like there’s too much size/thickness in that region overall. It’s a little wider than I’d like from the front (obliques) and a little thicker than I’d like (from the side). Almost like I’m headed towards ‘bodybuilder abs’ rather than ‘mens physique abs’. It’s especially prominent if I bend over or sit down, people are surprised b/c they think I’m so lean when standing up. Now I do want a strong healthy mid-section to prevent injury but I want my abdominal region to be as tiny/shrink wrapped as humanly possible. It might be in my head but my abs today seem bigger (and less shrink wrapped) than they did just a couple years ago at the same bodyweight. My ab isolation volume is slightly lower than before but my overall lifting volume (and uni-lateral volume) is higher than before. So I’m not sure if my overall ab volume is up or not.

IN CONCLUSION I’m not sure if I should do moderate ab volume or decrease it (maybe none at all). -Moderate volume b/c of what this article states about ‘lazy stomach’ and weak abs. I haven’t been deadlifting/squatting heavy in the past couple years due to a so-so lower back so that could factor in here. -Decrease volume b/c loss of hypertrophy in abs (see Mike Israetel’s ab hypertrophy article. He states ab volume increases the size of the abs and training them directly might be a net drawback for physique competitors). And besides they already get trained indirectly in other movements.

Nice job building up your abs! When you bend over or sit down, your abs aren’t going to look shrink-wrapped no matter how perfect they are. Your skin will fold, and as you breathe your stomach will inflate in and out. That’s okay—men aren’t supposed to look like cover models 24/7.

As for your abs being too big, though, yep, you might want to just stop training them altogether. They’ll stay strong with all the isolation work you do, but there’s no need to do any direct ab work.

You can also work on your posture and keep improving your technique with the squats and deadlifts, even if they aren’t that heavy. That should help train your transverse abdominus and keep your core really functional.

Your abs are a muscle group. They’re not just like all of your other muscles, but they’re more similar than not in terms of what makes them grow. Just like our other muscle groups, we can train them once, twice or even several times per week and get fairly optimal growth. Most research shows that a training frequency of 2–3 times per week per muscle group leads to more muscle growth (in all muscles), but when comparing that to guys who train their muscles just once per week, the difference is actually pretty small. So I’d say it would depend on what style of training program you’re following.

So I would recommend training your abs 2–3 times per week, just like you’re training your other muscle groups. (You can do this fairly easily by doing three full-body workouts each week.)

Hi, I weigh around 145 lbs with 17% (according to my scale) and 20% (according to your chart) body fat. I am trying to bulk up and not worried about abs for now. But I have a question, can genetics lead to development of love handles? My stomach is fairly flat but I’ve had love handles since I was a kid and I weighed 90 lbs till the age of 16 with well defined abs. Then I started eating more, gained 30 lbs and after turning 18 I start lifting weights. And today I am 145 lbs at the age of 20. My love handles are still the same. So I just wanted to know how can I get rid of those?

Hey Vinit. Yes. Love handles definitely have a genetic component. The trick is to not worry about where you’re storing fat, which we have little control over, but rather what your overall body fat percentage is. So to get rid of your love handles, lose fat in general. I see you’ve commented on our skinny-fat article, so I think you’re already on the right track 🙂

I do have a query though. I am 17 years old, 125 pounds and 5ft 10 inches tall. So I have a little less than a flat stomach. What would my body fat percentage be?(14 to 15% according to some scales) It is because I wanted to develop six pack abs so bad. I have started exercising an hour daily, but should I first bulk up then cut down or is there any other method?

How much do genetics determine one’s ability to get visible abs? I seem to carry my fat quite low – when out-of-shape I have solid pecs and visible ribs, but a belly and love handles at the same time.

When I finished high school I was 6 foot and 135lb, but no visible abs. I was in the best shape of my life at 22 when I was boxing – I was a little under 150lb, good muscle definition, particularly in my arms and chest, but still could barely see my abs while tensing with good lighting.

I’m wondering if I’d need a lower body fat percentage than most to have abs?